The Kindle has two other factors against it, though. One is its lack of availability in any physical store, making it pretty hard to check it out before you buy. And this impacts the second thing, which is its price, something a lot of people won't accept in a device that they cannot physically see or touch before they cough up the dough for it.

Unless Amazon either lowers the price to a more comfortable point, or announces that everyone can go see a Kindle at Best Buy or someplace, there will continue to be resistance against it.

Since Amazon can't seem to make them fast enough to meet demand, I don't think that's a meaningful factor at the moment.

But I suspect the total number of Kindles sold is in the tens of thousands, at best, and it really needs to be in the hundreds of thousands to be a long term success from Amazon's perspective.

If Amazon can get sales in that range, we may see a price drop, for reasons we've discussed elsewhere. Of course, we'll also see unhappiness from Kindle users who bought at the higher price point when a price drop occurs...

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WRT a keyboard and USB dongle for the 505, if the device could connect wirelessly to the web, you could use the keyboard to interact on websites (perhaps to buy more books). Or to e-mail authors and ask them why their books aren't available as e-books...

Sure. If software existed for the 505 to let you get content from the web or email authors. Does it?

That's my major problem with dedicated readers: what they don't do. For the prices charged, I need more functionality.
______Dennis